Stone Creek by Davis, Lainey (reading diary .TXT) 📕

I don’t notice the awkward silence in the training room until I’ve hung up my bag and turn around to see Emily staring at me, biting her lip. “What?” I whisper to her, looking around. There’s a few swimmers scattered around, but mostly the room seems quiet. And then I see Justin glowering in the door of his office.

“Olive, get in here,” he says, his voice cold. “Now.” He turns around and I hear the groan of his desk chair as he sinks into it.

My eyes go wide and Emily reaches out to squeeze my hand. “It’ll be ok,” she tells me. “I promise. I’m going to stay right here and keep my eyes on the office, ok?”

My heart pounds as I walk toward his office, and I’m barely inside before he starts screaming at me. “Do you have any idea what the hell you’ve done?”

Justin shouts about practicing medicine without a license and unsupervised, reckless behavior. “You could have permanently injured Tim,” he screams. “In a room full of doctors. There was absolutely NO REASON for you to do what you did.”

I know it’s not worth interrupting him to explain the chaos of that hallway. I don’t need to tell him that Tim was in agony and that I had Bax call 911 immediately. I believe eventually, Bax could have procured one of the doctors from in at the banquet, but pandemonium would have ensued in that hall. I stand patiently, biting my lip and listening as Justin yells at me until I hear him utter the unthinkable.

“Get your things and get out,” he says at last. “You’re fired.”

“What?” The word falls out of my mouth unintentionally, and I see a vein tick in Justin’s neck.

“I said you’re fucking fired, Olive. Get. Out.”

I’m proud of myself for not crying in front of him, or even when Emily hugs me in the hall as she hands me my bag and a note card with her cell number on it. I don’t start crying and shaking until I get out of the building. Losing my position was not even something I considered when I jumped into action while Tim was hurting. But now, faced with the reality of losing my work study job, I realize that I’m a third of the way into my senior year and have no way to cover costs. My scholarship depends on keeping this job.

Three years and change are about to have been wasted if I can’t figure out what the hell to do. Ok, I tell myself as I cry while I’m walking. We need to figure out a plan.

When I get back to my dorm, I see that Tia and Elyse are in their room with their door open, and I practically fall into their room, relieved to see people who care about me. “Oh,” I sob, as they spring up to hug me.

“Olive!” Tia shouts, rubbing my back. “What happened? Come here!” They pull me in and wrap me up tight and I tell them everything.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Bax

Thwack. I feel a sting on my leg as someone flicks me, and I crack open one eye as I’m lying on the table getting my deep tissue massage. “Kev, dude, if we’re going to be friends you have to stop fucking flicking me.” He interrupted me daydreaming about my night with Olive.

He stands next to the table looking exhausted, like he sat up all night. The hospital, I realize. “Oh shit,” I say, sitting up. “Hey, can we end a few minutes early.” I raise my eyebrows to the trainer who smiles and pats my leg.

“Sure,” she says. “Everything looks great, Bax.”

“Thank you,” I say, walking to the hall with Kevan, who proceeds to slump against the wall. “How’s Tim?”

“He’s home,” Kevan says. “Looped up on oxy. His family knows everything, by the way. It went about as well as he feared…”

I run my hands across my chin. “That fucking sucks, dude.” I think about how my family treats me like shit, too, and my mom in fact drove right out of my life forever. “Does he know this is on them, and not about anything he did?” I always try to remember Olive’s words to me about my parents making their own choices, about them not dealing with their own shit. It feels like the right thing to say.

Kevan shakes his head. “I don’t know. But listen, that’s not why I got you out of your massage.” He looks around the hall and lifts up on tip toes to see something in the training room office. “Olive got fired this morning,” he whispers. “Word is she’s pretty upset.”

I run directly to Olive’s dorm. This is such bullshit. I can’t even believe this is happening after the best night of my life. I have to sign in as a damn guest and wait for someone to escort me to Olive’s room since she’s evidently not in there to open the window and she locked it before the banquet last night.

“Are you Baxter?” A girl I’ve seen around Olive’s dorm stands in the hall. “I’m Tia,” she says. She nods her head at the doorman. “He’s with me.”              I walk over to her and she takes my arm. “Olive’s pretty torn up,” she says. “But she keeps pausing to apologize about my clothes getting ruined. Seriously, tell her to stop worrying about the clothes, ok?”

I smile. I like this girl already. When we get down the hall I see Olive curled up on a bed in their room across the hall from her own. “Hey,” I say, crouching down beside her. “It’s going to be ok, baby. We’re going to fix this, ok?”

“Oh, Bax,” she sobs. I haven’t seen her this upset in years. Not since her huge fight with her